Teachers’ readiness and usage of online teaching practices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An empirical investigation

Abstract

The substantial disruption caused by the COVID-19 epidemic to the world's education system is only one of the many setbacks the world has recently experienced. The transition of the students from their offline learning mode to a fully digital approach was not easy from the beginning for them. The online teaching readiness heavily relied on their competencies and skills to adapt the pedagogy, training, technical skills, a proper mindset and new roles. This research endeavors to evaluate the readiness of the teachers belonging to higher education institutions (HEIs) to handle online education based on the online teaching readiness model. A systematic questionnaire with 30 statements was used by the researcher to collect and analyse data from 296 HEI lecturers in Saudi Arabia. Smart PLS3 was used to attain reliability, convergent, discriminate validity and model fitness. These programs will help equip the teachers with the necessary technical skills, pedagogy, competency and readiness to comprehend the requisite techniques of online teaching and the vital strategies for keeping their students engaged. Technical proficiency, pedagogy, competency and teaching readiness show a direct relationship with online education. On the other hand, attitude and training do not show any relationship with online education.